Forbidden Kiss

by Shannon Leigh

  “I don’t think that at all,” Jule replied, guilt making her avoid her sister’s all-seeing gaze. But dang if Natala’s idea didn’t spur more theories. “Grab my bag off the floor there, will you?”

  Jule pawed through her bag, grabbing her notebook. She searched for a rough sketch she’d made while at Montgomery’s, one of the rose in his painting. Three distinct petals lay open, but age and darkness had wilted the rose and it hung facing down at an awkward angle.

  “You don’t have glossies of this painting?” Natala asked.

  “No. And I don’t think I’ll get the opportunity either. My sketch will have to do. For now.” Montgomery would be seeing her again, probably sooner that he’d like.

  Natala tapped her lips with an index finger, thinking so hard the air almost crackled with the energy.

  “So the first painting has the same rose with one petal unfurled. This painting, which you think is by the same painter, has a similar rose with nine petals. Too bad I can’t look to see if there’s a hidden number nine in the shadow. But I think you’ve got a message here indicating there are nine of something.” Proud of her summation, Natala turned a bright smile on her sister.

  Nine of something. Nine paintings in a series? It wouldn’t be unheard of. Jule tried to see the paintings with fresh eyes. If Jule had the first painting in the series and Montgomery the last, then there were seven unaccounted for.

  Seven unknown works of art out there, waiting for Jule.

  “Oh my God.” Her shoulders arched back with the revelation.

  Natala jumped at the unexpected outburst. “What?”

  “Holy crap. I think you’re right. I think whoever painted this wanted it known there were nine in the series. And it was important that whoever they were intended for knew in what order they belonged.”

  Natala rolled over onto her knees, catching Jule’s excitement. “So who were the paintings intended for?”

  Jule met her wide eyes. “That’s the question now, isn’t it?”

  …

  “Nine paintings of a series?” The news felt like a sucker punch. Rom maintained his usual stoic attitude, even bracing his weight with a hand to the doorjamb, but inside, he gasped for air. Lawrence, the clever old son of a bitch, had been busy the last years of his life.

  Hell, he wasn’t even sure what he felt besides surprise. Elation? Completion? Relief? The thought his hell on earth could almost be over staggered him. Brought him to his knees. He wanted to weep. Being able to lie down for the long sleep of death had gone from never-in-all-of eternity to maybe-soon in a matter of seconds.

  Rom watched Jule inspect the oil on the canvas.

  Her movements were stiff and precise, telling Rom she had much to say, but even more to ask. When she’d knocked earlier, Rom toyed with the idea of simply not answering, aggravated by his body’s sudden surge of pleasure at her silhouetted shape outside his door.

  He could control his body. It was the emotional baggage typically following close behind that worried him. He didn’t want Jule Casale in his head, and by God, not in his heart.

  But he couldn’t do it, damn it. He couldn’t leave her standing in the cold at this hour of night.

  Unfortunately, Mercutio, the relentless, never-sleeping voice of conscience inside his head, wouldn’t let it go.

  If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark.

  Rom’s head jerked up at the sound of Jule’s voice telling him something or other about art history. He’d been slipping more and more frequently into the past and the ease of the transition had him uneasy.

  “Series are common. Though in this large a number, not as much.” She warmed to the topic and some of the stiffness melted away into a comfortable air of academia. She was right at home in her patient discussion of theory.

  He almost smiled at the little professor, her earnestness sweeping away his dark thoughts.

  She talked with her hands, her fingers framing her thoughts as they spilled out one after another. “But what I’m proposing is the painter—whoever our Anonymous is—included a simple legend with each painting.”

  Stepping in close to the tomb scene in Rom’s bedroom, she stretched a hand toward the rose, her index finger skimming a shadow on a petal. “Look here. The shadow is actually the number nine, corresponding to the number of open petals on the flower.”

  Rom didn’t need to move in for a closer look. Even from a distance her perfume filled his nostrils—a teasing scent that hinted of warm skin.

  He could easily see the shadowed number from where he stood, safely back from any contact with Jule Casale.

  Damn. Why had he never noticed the symbols she pointed out?

  You see only that which you want, Mercutio whispered defiantly.

  Jule pulled a manila folder from her bag at her feet, handing it over. “The rose in my painting has a number one. I think it means we’re looking at the first and last of a series of nine. The first and the last because in my painting the light is that of early morning and the rose is just opening. In your painting,” she turned back to the two dead lovers, “the sun has set and the flower is dead. The series has ended and the story told.”

  What story did the other seven paintings tell? And why had it taken him so long to discover more paintings existed? When he found the tomb scene on that long ago summer night in Paris, he never thought there would be more, or that Lawrence’s reach could touch him over so many spent centuries.

  But here and now, faced with the old friar’s parting words, Rom wanted to laugh aloud, surprised but yet glad to hear from Lawrence again after so long a silence.

  “Do you see the possibilities? There are seven more paintings out there—waiting. Perhaps identified, perhaps not. But I want to find them, Rom. Bring them all together. Will you help me? Will you partner with me?”

  He knew it took a great deal of vulnerability for her to ask him. That, and courage.

  Rom acknowledged he wanted her. Now, when his world, long and dark as it had been, could soon be coming to end. He wanted to lose himself in her. Bury his face in her midnight hair, kiss her white neck as she arched beneath him and nip the lobes of her ears as he whispered his intent.

  He wanted to wake up next to her and take comfort in another human body. Simple pleasures, simple emotions. Feelings tied to the living.

  But admitting it didn’t translate to doing it. And wanting it didn’t mean he deserved it. Or her.

  Rom pushed off the wall and went to stand in front of the oil version of Juliet. “I wish I could help you. But I can’t.”

  Too much at risk.

  Turning sharply, he met Jule’s wide eyes, steeling himself for her disappointment. He could handle that. Rom felt it every day.

  Jule sucked her bottom lip between white teeth and breathed deep. She wasn’t giving up—yet. She squared her shoulders and dug in her heels.

  “All I want to know is where you bought the painting. A name, Rom. That’s all I need. It will be confidential. I just need a lead. I’m at a dead end, literally.”

  She’d explained the provenance of the first painting, but the owner and the seller died within months of each other. As had the woman who’d given Rom his painting. She’d died during the French Revolution. A victim of the guillotine.

  Rom took Jule’s clenched hands between his, squeezing them reassuringly. “Truly, Jule. I want to help you, but in this I cannot. It’s for your own good.”

  She forced his hands away, frustration bringing color to her cheeks. “I don’t understand. For my own good?” When he didn’t answer, she continued. “Is there anything I can say to convince you otherwise?” She looked down at the ground, but her head came back up quickly as she realized how easily her offer could be misinterpreted.

  “Nothing.” Rom forced a finality in the word, ending the discussion the only way he knew how. She headed for the door.

  Jule turned her head as though to speak, but didn’t look at him. “I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry I bothered
you yet again. I thought you might be excited by the discovery,” her voice faltered.

  “Jule, please. I hate for you to leave like this.” Translation: he felt like a complete bastard for putting the tiny white tension lines around her mouth. “Share a drink with me?”

  “No. I need to get back. It’s late and I’m sure you have things—” She waved her hand, at a loss for words.

  She walked away, leaving a lingering trail of perfume.

  Rom shut the door after he watched her cab drive away. He was caught in a loop and the same scenarios kept replaying. How many times would he put that woman in a cab, only to see her go away with her heart in her eyes?

  He leaned against the door and let Lawrence’s words trickle in. The old man’s voice had been whispering inside his head all night, but Rom had kept the memories under lock and key. With Jule gone, he unlocked the door on his memory and let Lawrence in.

  ...

  “It wasn’t supposed to end that way,” Lawrence said emphatically, pulling weeds from his herbal garden sheltered at the rear of the monastery by high stonewalls.

  “Then tell me. How was it supposed to end?” Romeo ground out between clenched teeth, straining with the effort not to grab Lawrence by the collar and shake him until his eyes rolled up into his tonsured head.

  It had been one month since Romeo woke up in a monk’s cell far away from Juliet’s tomb. One month since Lawrence had forced a potion down his throat and jerked him from heaven with Juliet. Thirty days of excruciating torment in which Romeo tried every way imaginable to kill himself. Each time, his body healed, but his mind teetered at the edge of insanity.

  How could he go on? And for what reason?

  Lawrence threw a mess of leggy green stalks into a pile and wiped his hands, squinting up at Romeo under the early morning sun. “How should it have ended? As it does for any normal couple. With the both of you dying in old age, mourned by children and grandchildren alike. Beloved by family, friends, and township. I saw it so.”

  Lawrence was crazy. Romeo had no doubt. But he also possessed the ability to make human men immortal.

  He just couldn’t raise the dead. His experiments in alchemy and magic hadn’t progressed that far.

  “So how the hell does this end?” Romeo demanded, kicking the pile of greenery.

  “Somewhere out there,” Lawrence whispered, his chin raised and his eye drawn to a distant point only he could see, “sometime in the days and years to come, you will meet Juliet again and find your peace.”

  Romeo knelt beside Lawrence, grabbing his shoulders until the old man’s focus returned to the garden. “When? Where? How?”

  Lawrence placed a warm, calloused hand over one of Romeo’s. “That I have not foreseen. The images come by dreams and linger but a short while. I’m sure the answers will be revealed if we are patient.”

  ...

  Rom didn’t do patient. Then or now. He made a decision to leave Lawrence after that day in the garden. He’d never returned. Now he thought perhaps he’d been hasty and Lawrence not as crazy as he’d assumed.

  Rom knew only one way to find out the truth. Return to Verona. Find the remainder of Lawrence’s paintings and piece together how he could rest his bones next to Juliet’s at long last.

  Pushing away from the door, Rom climbed the steps to his room, prepared to catch the next flight to Venice. Guilt made his tread heavy. Guilt over leaving Jule without an explanation or a champion to protect her against the Pios of the world. A woman as spirited as she deserved as much.

  Chapter Seven

  Betrayed. Jule clung to the word for a moment, allowing the pain of Rom’s rejection last night to course through her. It burned through her heart, up her veins to her throat, pushing its way behind her eyes and finally lodging in her brain with a pounding she couldn’t subdue even with Motrin.

  “So he’s left the country, then. When will he be back?” Jule asked Ben Valerio, the attorney she tracked down as Rom’s forwarding contact since he tendered his dealer status at the auction house last week. She’d gotten the word—albeit too late—from a friend at the auction house who knew of her interest in Montgomery.

  Valerio, a fifty-ish attorney whose graying hair matched his suit, sat next to her in one of the client chairs. He obviously took his compassionate lawyerly bit seriously. No intense looks from an authoritative position behind his desk; this guy went all out.

  It made his news all the more personal and painful. She couldn’t possibly give in to the urge to put her head on the desk and cry out days of pent up frustrations. But his quiet comfort said he wouldn’t mind if she did. Which made Jule wonder if other women, scorned and lied to by one Rom Montgomery, had at one time or another sat in this same chair. Hearing a similar speech. The tactful brush-off.

  She deserved more than that.

  Valerio’s sharp, hazel eyes watched Jule from over the top of his reading glasses. He reminded her of her Pop when he used to be more fatherly—before Pio.

  “Honestly, I’m not sure. He didn’t say. Sounded like a lengthy sabbatical though.”

  Her throat burned with his betrayal, making it difficult to form the words.

  “May I ask where he went?”

  “You’re Casale’s daughter?”

  “One of them,” Jule managed, willing to answer whatever questions he threw at her if he returned the favor.

  Valerio raised his eyebrows and nodded. “And your relationship to Pio Mascaro?”

  “There’s no relationship. He’s a business associate of my father’s.”

  He steepled his fingers and reclined against the seat back where he stared at the ceiling. “I see.”

  “Well, pardon me, but I don’t. Why are you asking about Pio? And how can I get in touch with Rom Montgomery? I need to speak to him immediately.” To find out if he intends to steal my discovery. It was her find! Her reputation.

  She hadn’t been able to think of much else since finding out Rom had disappeared. She auto-piloted through her day at the Art Institute, but the work didn’t hold her interest. Nothing had since leaving Rom’s last night.

  It felt too personal, his rejection. Not the collegial, “sorry, can’t help,” but the heartbreaking “I won’t help you,” because of the family. The Casales.

  It was just blood for Christ’s sake. She might be related to a group of law-circumventing, second generation jerks, but Jule had never done an illegal thing in her life. Well, except for that time she inhaled in college.

  Yet here she sat, continuing to pay for the sins committed by the family.

  “What the hell is going on?” she blurted.

  Valerio got up and crossed behind her, shutting the heavy office door. He then took the seat behind his desk, clasping his hands on the leather blotter in front of him.

  Here comes the never-bother-my client-again speech.

  “I did some checking into your family’s background at Mr. Montgomery’s request.”

  Valerio held up a hand when she started to protest the invasion of privacy. Not to mention that it screamed Rom’s pronouncement of her as untrustworthy.

  “Mr. Montgomery is worried for your welfare, Ms. Casale. He expressed as much to me after he had a talk with Mr. Mascaro at your house last night.”

  “And?” She dreaded the answer.

  “He expressly told Mr. Montgomery not to bother you or your family. He also laid a very explicit claim to your affections, which later he re-enforced with a visit from your brothers.”

  “What!” Jule lurched to her feet, her bag hitting the floor with a thud. “When?” She leaned over Valerio’s desk, invading his personal space.

  “Please, Ms. Casale, there’s more.” He gestured for her to take her seat and wouldn’t continue until she sat. “I looked at public records this morning and found a marriage license application filed under Pio Mascaro and Jule Casale—dated last week.”

  “Jesus!” She shot out of the chair once again and paced the office. A sick dread rose in her
heart. “Is that legal? Can he file something like that without my knowledge? I mean what the hell? I’m being stalked by my father’s best friend.”

  “So his actions come as no surprise, then?”

  “No.” Jule spun to look Valerio in the eye. “Yes. The guy has always given me the creeps, staring and making inappropriate comments when no one else can hear, but this is crazy. Does my father know?”

  “That’s the thing, Ms. Casale. Your father and Mascaro drew up a contract transferring property from Mascaro to Edmondo upon your marriage.”

  Jule sat before her knees gave out. Pop had sold her out.

  “Ms. Casale?” Valerio hovered anxiously over her after some minutes, a glass of water in his hand. Jule took it, but didn’t drink. She couldn’t work the muscles in her throat. Her father’s betrayal lodged there like a swelling sponge.

  What was with the men in her life? Couldn’t she find one, just one who didn’t lie, cheat, and steal?

  “Ms. Casale, are you all right?” True concern shone from the lawyer’s eyes, an emotion Jule didn’t think men of his ilk possessed.

  “Why are you being so nice to me? And why are you telling me all this?” she asked, afraid of his answer. If it involved her returning the favor, she would kick him in the balls and storm out of the office. Enough was enough.

  “Rom Montgomery is not just a client, but a friend. A very dear friend. Before he left, he spoke of you and requested I help if you came to me. Well, here you are and in a very tight spot, from where I’m standing.”

  Jule tried to process the information. Was that a you-owe-me kind of speech? And had Rom really asked Valerio to look out for her? Did guilt drive him to make the request, knowing he stood to benefit from all her hard work if he recovered the paintings before she did?

  “Did he suddenly develop a conscience? Why does he care what happens to me? He didn’t act like he cared last night.” She swiped a hand across her forehead, pushing back errant curls.

  Valerio once again took the client’s chair next to hers, the supple burgundy leather squeaking softly. “Without compromising Rom more than I already have, let me say he cares very deeply. He may not show it, but under the scowl and the threatening looks, a poet’s heart beats.”